A day after polling in 152 seats in the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections registered the highest-ever turnout, at about 92.9%, all eyes are now on the 142 seats scheduled for voting in the second and final phase on April 29.
These 142 seats are considered the incumbent Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s core stronghold spread over south Bengal and Kolkata district.
The record voter turnout in the first phase, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed, “put a seal on… the wave of change that had been visible in Bengal for a long time”. With both Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah set to campaign in the second-phase seats too, the BJP is looking to breach the TMC’s South Bengal fort as it looks to outdo its seat tally of 77 from the 2021 polls, when it first became the principal Opposition in the state on the back of a strong performance in north Bengal.
The second phase will see several crucial, high-profile seats go to the polls, including Bhabanipur where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is set to take on the BJP’s Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly Suvendu Adhikari.
Key constituencies
The seats that will vote in the second phase cover eight electoral districts, including Kolkata North, Kolkata South, Howrah, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Purba Bardhaman.
In 2021, despite the BJP’s aggressive push, the TMC maintained its hold on these belts and won 123 of the total 142 seats. The BJP could only win 18 seats, with the Left’s ally Indian Secular Front (ISF) winning the remaining one seat.
While Kolkata North and South together have 11 seats, Howrah has 16, Nadia 17, North 24 Parganas 33, South 24 Parganas 31, Hooghly 18, and Purba Bardhaman 16.
The final phase will decide the fates of key TMC leaders, including Mamata, Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim in Kolkata Port, Minister of State for Finance Chandrima Bhattacharya in Dum Dum Uttar, Minister of Commerce and Industries Shashi Panja in Shyampukur, Power Minister Aroop Biswas in Tollyganj, Education Minister Bratya Basu in Dum Dum, and Minister of State for Fire and Emergency Services Sujit Basu in Bidhannagar, among others.
The BJP has fielded from Panihati the mother of the junior doctor who was raped and murdered at the R G Kar Hospital in Kolkata in October 2024. Two senior BJP leaders, former Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta and actor-politician Rupa Ganguly, have been fielded from Rashbehari and Sonrapur Dakshin, respectively, in the second phase.
Why these seats matter
While Modi has claimed the first phase’s turnout signals a “BJP wave”, the TMC’s top leaders too have interpreted the record turnout as a wave in its favour.
“Do you know why voter turnout is so high even after deletion of so many names? It is because people know that this election is a fight to safeguard their rights. Because after this, they (BJP) will implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC),” Mamata claimed.
“I am not a political astrologer. But whenever I have made predictions on political results, it has clicked,” said TMC national general secretary and Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee at a rally in Jagatballavpur. “In the first phase we have hit a century. There is panic in the BJP camp. They are calling journalists and asking them to run the narrative that the BJP has done well in the first phase and are cruising ahead.”
Bhabanipur contest
The Bhabanipur Assembly seat, which falls in South Kolkata, is set to see a high-profile face-off between Mamata and her ex aide-turned-BJP leader Adhikari, who is also contesting from his home turf, Nandigram, where he had defeated the TMC chief by about 1,900 votes in 2021.
After the EC’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, around 51,000 voters were deleted from the rolls in Bhabanipur, amounting to 21% of its electorate. These deletions have put pressure on Mamata, whose victory margin in the 2021 by-election from Bhabanipur was about 58,800 votes.
In the final lap of her statewide campaign, Mamata is set to focus on Bhabanipur, where apart from holding meetings with TMC workers, she is expected to canvass at the grassroots level, which would be a first for her. In the cosmopolitan Bhabanipur, Mamata is expected to visit Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras to attract non-Bengali voters. She has been holding padayatras and closed-door meetings with the residents of high rises, where there are considerable non-Bengali voters.
On the other hand, Amit Shah has also been camping in Bengal to oversee the BJP’s campaign, including in key seats like Bhabanipur. After Nandigram voted in the first phase, Adhikari is now concentrating on his Bhabanipur campaign.
The BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Rahul Sinha said, “In the first phase, such a huge turnout indicated what we have been saying for so long. People have been saying if a fearless atmosphere is created during the elections, they will drive out the TMC… So the question of who is strong in the second phase does not matter. Remember the 2011 Assembly polls. The TMC had nothing then. But they toppled the Left Front. Our position is much better now. We will win two-thirds of the seats.”
But TMC spokesperson Arup Chakraborty said, “These 142 seats (in the second phase) have always been our stronghold. In the 2021 Assembly or 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the TMC was always ahead on 123 of these seats. So in this election, we will actually increase our tally.”
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said she is the candidate in all seats 
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